I have to just come out and say it: I’m weirded out that the other FTM character in the play I’m performing in this week is being played by a genetic guy. A guy who is a working, handsome, white, probably straight, and yes -talented- actor in LA. A guy who I’m guessing has never been an outsider, unless it was because he was an actor, which is pretty far from being an outsider because you feel like you’re living in the wrong body. He’s doing a fine job – but in the scenes where his character is talking to his girlfriend, he’s just… a man. A cis-man. A man who is used to being a man, with all the privileges (and stress, and difficulties) that come with that. He’s not a man who chose to be a man. Who used to be a woman. And it bugs me.

I went off to the play audition for the FTM character last Thursday dressed in my college-years best: baggy khakis, full binding, gray t shirt with blue plaid button down and a black skater jacket. Incidentally, my college gf was in town visiting – her comment when I came out to leave for the audition was: “Whoa, does somebody have a cappella rehearsal or what?” because I had basically regressed ten years. (Not that I consider keeping in touch with my trans identity regressing, it’s simply a style thing. I don’t wear a lot of khaki these days, much less full binding.)

I was, as is usual when I go out for LGBT parts, worried that I didn’t look butch or trans (or old or young) enough. I needn’t have worried.

How do I say this? Friends, I was the ONLY women they saw for the part. Everyone else there was a cis-man. Straight up Male. And unless the two guys who came in right as I was leaving were fully transitioned FTMs who passed so well I couldn’t read them at all, there were no other queer or otherwise trans identified folks there, save for one excellent and flamboyant drag queen (isn’t there always one excellent and flamboyant drag queen?). I was the only butch in a button down.

So the gothic rock horror musical I’ve been working on opens Sept. 16th. Have I not mentioned it? That’s because I’m always in rehearsal. Or cooking. Those are the only two things I do when I’m not doing any of my other three days jobs.

But there it is: two weeks to opening. And although my character is small, the composer is already writing a spinoff for a dark-night series the theater produces. I’m a little too tired to be excited, but I’ll be there when and where they want me to be. Because, at the end of the day, I’m a performer. And someone’s writing a tiny musical because I’m awesome. Something to remember on these (many) days when I’m feeling low about it all.